APORTE DEL PROYECTO A LA GESTIÓN DEL TERRITORIO

public infrastructure. This precedent derives from both the number and location of houses built in the post-war period and the way in which the public housing program was articulated and justified within policy. Both the building program and the way it was framed positioned the provision of affordable accommodation to the Australian working class as central to promoting economic development, enabling a better, more equitable society, and fulfilling the core responsibilities of government. However, this status has been weakened in more recent decades as the sector has become residualised. This residualisation has been driven by a number of factors, including an ideological shift within government which has led to changed attitudes as to the appropriate role of government and the desirability of certain forms of government expenditure. In addition, substantial economic restructuring has produced significant levels of unemployment and underemployment (especially among the traditional ‘blue-collar’ working class) and critically undermined the viability of the Australian welfare safety net, which relied upon a ‘breadwinner’ model of full employment supported by relatively high wages. As a result of these changes, social inequality has widened and this is arguably nowhere more evident than in the housing market.

Beyond the definitional problem of whether or not social housing can accurately be conceptualised as ‘infrastructure—and whether or not this matters—discussions about

increasing investment in the sector lead to other questions, including the amount of investment that would be necessary and/or desirable. Currently, social housing is a rationed resource. As some interviewees pointed out, even if the current system operated with perfect efficiency, it would still struggle to provide enough dwellings to accommodate every household currently both eligible and in urgent need. Were investment to be directed at changing this situation—at

expanding the number of households that can be accommodated—at what point would that investment be ‘enough’?

The answer to this question depends on the way in which the ‘problem’ is defined. A policy that restricts social housing to the very, very poor and disadvantaged or households with ‘complex’ needs, identifies the ‘problem’ as confined to this group. Yet the housing market failure in Australia is arguably broader than this. Many other households have difficulty in obtaining, affording and sustaining decent, stable housing, including: low-paid workers living in places where rents are high, supply is low, or both; low-income retirees living in the private rental market; single people; ‘key workers’ whose incomes are insufficient for them to be

accommodated within a reasonable distance of their place of work; young people trying to establish themselves in independent housing; and people experiencing changes in income or housing need due to illness, unemployment or a relationship breakdown. For the growing numbers of households living long term in the private rental market, a systemic lack of

guaranteed tenure security affects workforce and educational engagement and social cohesion, and imposes additional and significant transactional costs. Ordinary housing market processes fail to take account of these needs, with the distribution of new housing supply weighted towards higher priced stock rather than more affordable housing, despite sustained demand for the latter (Ong, Dalton et al. 2017). This broader perspective is not necessarily inherent in the way in which policy makers and the literature discuss social housing itself, but these are issues that arise when infrastructure and its associated ideas are introduced into the policy discussion. This suggests there is scope to extend discussion of broader housing market dysfunction to incorporate increased investment in social housing as a legitimate and powerful strategic intervention.

5.2

A way forward for policy makers

In summary, the findings of this research are as follows.

 Social housing providers can use infrastructure policy tools to make a convincing case for investment in the social housing system.

 Government intervention to address housing market failure is fairly well-accepted, but conventional understandings of ‘market failure’ do not encompass either the extent of the dysfunction in the Australian housing system or the positive and productive role that could be played by government in improving housing outcomes and contributing to wider economic and social objectives.

 Social housing suffers due to the misplaced focus on budget constraint as a marker of government achievement.

 There is a strong historical precedent to regard the social housing system as making a broad social and economic contribution by promoting decent living conditions for all Australians regardless of income.

Together, these findings lead to the following conclusions, which could be used to inform strategic policy development and practice.

 Social housing policy makers need to develop the capacity, skills and expertise to effectively articulate the benefits of investment in social housing relative to the costs of doing so (e.g. through cost-benefit analysis and more dynamic techniques of business case presentation and evaluation).11

In doing so, the following matters need to be considered, to avoid the risk of unforeseen and undesirable consequences.

— Social housing delivers a diverse range of ‘outcomes’, many of which are central to the work of social housing, but are not easily quantifiable or monetisable.

— The work of social housing is presently constrained by its inadequate resources and this can distort perceptions of what social housing is for and what it achieves. Any cost- benefit analysis should take into account the much broader range of outcomes that the provision of decent and affordable housing for households at the lower end of the income spectrum can achieve, rather than confining itself to the limited range of outcomes achievable by a residualised and underfunded system.

— Any methodology used by policy makers needs to be applicable to a diverse range of fdevelopment contexts, including the development of discrete social housing projects (e.g. site-specific development), dispersed social housing production (e.g. scattered-site development), and tenant-centred proposals (e.g. the provision of housing to an

individual or group of individuals over an extended time frame).

— Any methodology used must take into account the perspectives of social housing tenants (and applicants), the values they place on housing, and the housing and life outcomes they aspire to.

 Participants in the social housing sector, including academics, providers, advocates and tenant groups, need to advance arguments in support of direct government involvement in the provision of social (public and community) and affordable housing that specifically and actively engage political leaders, policy makers and other key stakeholders with the implications of the following issues.

— The societal purpose of housing in Australia, explicitly including its purpose beyond its role as a targeted welfare safety net, in meeting a range of social and economic needs and enabling the achievement of a range of social and economic aspirations.

— The manifest housing market failure in many parts of Australia, meaning the existence of a widening group of Australians who, all else being equal, have no reasonable prospect of being accommodated in the existing housing market—due to a range of reasons, including affordability barriers, absolute or relative supply shortfalls, discrimination or requirement for a modified living environment.

— The risk that the artificial priority presently given to government budget surplus actively contributes to worsening the housing crisis, exacerbating social inequality, inhibiting productivity and adding to the damage (social, economic and cultural) caused by failing to provide decent and affordable housing for Australian households on lower incomes (including but not confined to households with high and complex needs).

— The potential of alternative means of financing social housing investment—such as bonds, state investment banks or monetary financing—to provide the resources needed, not just to address Australia’s welfare housing challenges, but to build a social housing system that contributes on multiple levels to a broader agenda of social and economic inclusion and development.

5.3

Final remarks

The case can be made that social housing is infrastructure, but this is not sufficient for making the case for social housing. Underinvestment in the social housing system over many decades is evidence of a failure to value the contribution made by social housing to the Australian community—a contribution that includes economic benefits but is not confined to them. The

policy debate over the potential of new initiatives, like the NHFIC bond aggregator or City Deals program, provides a contextual setting within which these substantive issues and the limited capacity of housing policy as it is currently practiced to address them, are made clearer. Without genuine engagement with these issues and with the implications they have for people, places and institutions, there will not be meaningful change in the way in which funding and financing decisions—and thus, housing policy—is made.